Diversionist is part of the Cosplayers Series from 2004. In Cosplayers Cao Fei depicts the popularity among Asian youths of “cosplay” in which daily life is merged with images of video games and popular films. For many, this virtual reality is an outlet to “transcend” the paradox of a developing society in which the pleasures of consumption and depression of alienation go hand-in-hand. Cao Fei sensitively captures the new social consciousness and activism, beautifully translating them into photographic and video works.
Cao Fei is a celebrated multimedia artist known for works that focus on the interplay between real and fictional worlds. Working across photography, performance, video, and digital media, her practice vividly reflects the zeitgeist of the late twentieth century and the role that image production has played in shaping youth culture in a digital era. Influenced by an array of forms of global pop culture—from Cantonese Pop and Japanese anime to American hip-hop—a common thread in her practice is the merging of everyday life with new forms of technology as a means to unveil society’s unfulfilled desires. Her pivotal film Whose Utopia , for example, showcases assembly line workers in a factory in China as they act out their aspirations in a backdrop of industrial machinery. In another key body of work, RMB City, Fei created a virtual city through the platform Second Life —an online space that mimics ‘the real world’—as a vehicle to express ideas that relate to modernization, capitalism, and consumer culture. Through these constructed worlds, Fei presents a profound meditation on the boundaries between the real and the fantastic and the sense of alienation that drives new generations to increasingly experience the world behind the veneer of their Avatars. For Fei, the digital world is an expression of our human condition, and as such, an avenue to reflect on these emerging forms of social consciousness.
Categorized as low-level literature, a “Love Stories” book is a romantic popular fiction of proletariat China, read mainly by teenagers, students, and young workers...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
A mesmerizing experience of a vaguely familiar yet remote world, History of Chemistry I follows a group of men as they wander from somewhere beyond the edge of the sea through a vast landscape to an abandoned steel factory...
After engaging primarily with video and photography for more than a decade, Chen turned to painting to explore the issue of urban change and memories—both personal and collective...
11 Contemporary Artists Channeling Pierre Bonnard’s Post-Impressionist Vision | Artsy Skip to Main Content Art 11 Contemporary Artists Channeling Pierre Bonnard’s Post-Impressionist Vision Cath Pound Jan 22, 2024 5:56PM Considered one of the greatest colorists of modern art, Pierre Bonnard reveled in the simple joys of daily life...
I Was Afraid Of Critiquing Until I Met A Bunch Of Critics: Reflections on AAMR 2021 | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash June 23, 2021 By Sukhbir Cheema When you hear the word “critic”, what image do you conjure? I used to imagine a bespectacled person; bookish, extremely serious, and tough to please...
Saya Takut Untuk Mengkritik Sehinggalah Saya Berjumpa Sekumpulan Pengkritik: Refleksi Terhadap AAMR | ArtsEquator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia ArtsEquator Viewpoints Hello I'm Nik on Unsplash July 22, 2021 Oleh Sukhbir Cheema dan diterjemah oleh Fasyali Fadzly Bila anda mendengar perkataan “pengkritik”, apakah yang anda bayangkan? Saya sering membayangkan orang yang pakai cermin mata; ulat buku, sangat serius, dan payah untuk puaskan hatinya...
Unregistered City is a series of eight photographs depicting different scenes of a vacant, apparently post-apocalyptic city: Some are covered by dust and others are submerged by water...
In Dilemma: Three Way Fork in the Road , Wang references Peking opera in a re-interpretation of traditional text...
Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials...
The image of rusted nails, nuts and bolts as shrapnel sandwiched between a fried Chicken burger highlights the contrast between decadence and destruction...
The series Nightmare Wallpapers represents a shift if Chuen’s practice, allowing the artist to immerse himself in an “artistic pilgrimage of self healing” following the failure of the 2014 Umbrella Movement...
Pak created New York Public Library Projects (NYPLP) (2008) during a residency in New York, using public libraries as exhibition spaces and the books they house as raw materials...
Designed as an installation timed spent is determined by the viewer, as with classical sculpture, Anthems is a piece that is in place, and in time, and an important genre of video within the collection...
The black-and-white projection, Araf by Didem Pekün, begins, as a lithe man stands high up in the middle of the grand, rebuilt 16th-century Ottoman bridge in Mostar, in Bosnia and Herzegovina...